At the beginning of 1981, I became invisible. The occasion for this strange phenomenon was my return to New Zealand, with four young daughters, after the death of my husband when we were missionaries in Nepal.
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In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln noted the hostility and conflict between Christians across the Mason Dixon line. As the American clash over slavery split families, churches, and the entire nation, Lincoln pondered why the lines of hostility were drawn down the middle of the Church. Lincoln said, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other…The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”
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Look what God is doing in the lives of women and men partnering together to bring the whole gospel to the whole world! These portraits of Chinese, Nigerian and Indian women in ministry are excerpts from papers given at the Lausanne Conference for World Evangelism.
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When we talk about mutual submission, unconditional love or service through giftedness rather than gender, we are often conscious of the tension between these biblical ideals and the realities of a Church that is still “under construction.” While we pray for and envision a Church in which all Christians may serve through giftedness rather than gender, class or race, we are often sideswiped by the tenacious presence of sin that weakens our witness and drains our effectiveness. At times we are, as Soren Kierkegard suggests, “a glorious ruin.” We seem caught between what theologians call the “already and the not yet.” Church reformers such as Sojourner Truth, Frances Willard and William Wilberforce experienced this tension deeply as they pressed into God’s Spirit to build a society few had dreamed possible — a world without slavery.
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Sister Peng pays a high price to be a Christian in China. She has been arrested many times, and she will go to jail again if the police catch her preaching the gospel. Forced to live as a fugitive, she must sneak into her home at night to visit her husband and young daughter.
The first time Peng was taken into custody, just after the Tienanmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989, she was delivering a fresh shipment of Chinese Bibles to some unregistered pastors. She was thrown into a dirty detention cell and tortured with an electric cattle prod in an effort to force a confession of her “crimes.” She shivered in that cell for months. Guards offered no coats, blankets or feminine hygiene supplies.
“For eight months I had no contact with anyone. I just ate soup in my cell,” Peng told me when I visited China three years ago. “It is really God’s mercy that he fed me and kept me warm.”
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Imagine waking up one day without sensations in your body. You make a cup of hot tea and drink it without noticing the burning to your hands, mouth and throat. You sit through a long meeting forgetting to shift in your chair, because you cannot feel the loss of circulation in your legs or back. Dr. Paul Brand noted the devastation of patients living with leprosy, a crippling disease that robs the body of its capacity to feel pain and therefore protect itself.
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As the Mutuality editor, I pride myself on keeping the publication organized by planning ahead. Each issue follows a series of deadlines — dates when articles are due, editing is completed and the issue is published. This planning also applies to the themes addressed in each issue, as these are determined about a year in advance.
Except this time.
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This has been a painful issue of Mutuality. We have known that biblical equality isn’t just a crucial topic for the United States — but it’s also sorely needed around the world. We had a vision of exploring this concept, as well as honoring the dedication of those who work to communicate the message of equality internationally, often with additional cultural, political or religious challenges.
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